Damn. Still riled up about this.
I wonder if David Brooks would have written a column back
in 1972 that would have gone a little something like this:
"It is unfortunate, perhaps, that our indiscriminate carpet
bombing of North Vietnam is killing thousands upon thousands
of innocent civilians, but the architects of this slaughter
(Nixon, Kissinger, Laird...) will be remembered fondly years
from now when we chronicle their actions in glowing biographies
as champions of keeping misguided foreign populations from
self-determining a form of government other than democracy."
But hell, were Vietnamese civilians who lived under a government
that opposed the forceful importation of American style democracy all
that innocent? Shouldn't we let Ward Churchill start writing
op-eds for The NY Times?
Ok, I'll stop. This guy really pushes my buttons sometimes.
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2 comments:
Balderdash. At least with Vietnam containing Communism was the reason going in and coming out. When the neocons in the Bush admin. started talking up Iraq invasion on Sept. 12, 2001, bringing democracy wasn't the motive. Hell, these people don't want free and easy elections in Ohio. Their eyes glow red in the night for a reason.
Here's a good letter in response..
To the Editor:
The "mistakes" and "postwar screw-ups" in Iraq that David Brooks cavalierly mentions in his column about Paul D. Wolfowitz have brought the deaths of countless Iraqi civilians and 1,500 Americans, a rise in worldwide terrorism and the fracturing of international cohesion at a time when it is most needed.
The democratization of the Middle East he speaks about was inevitable, as evidenced by democratic forces at play before the Iraq war in Jordan, Qatar and even Iran.
The war has indeed hastened change. But the price - human suffering, billions of dollars that could have been spent more constructively and the great uncertainty associated with the turmoil we helped create - provides little cause to celebrate the achievements of Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz.
Khaled Galal
San Francisco, March 8, 2005
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